By. F. A. Carrington, Esq. 3 



the same certificate it is shown to be proportionally large in other 

 towns in Wiltshire : thus there are Communicants at — 



St. Edmund's, Sarum 1700 



Mere 800 



Chippenham 667 



Calne 860 



Malmesbury 860 



Devizes 900 



Bradford 576 



Trowbridge 500 



Aldbourne 400 



These large numbers are accounted for by the fact that before 

 the Protestant Reformation every one above the age of confirmation 

 who did not make his or her confession and receive absolution in 

 Passion Week, could not receive the Holy Sacrament on Easter 

 Sunday, and every one who did not do so, dying within the year, 

 would have been refused Christian burial, except for some very 

 special cause ;^ and the number of Communicants was so great, 

 that in the year 1637 Bishop Davenant made an ordinance that at 

 Aldbourne only two hundred persons at once should receive the 

 Holy Communion, and that on each of four following Sundays. 



This ordinance is entered in the Aldbourne Parish Register, and 

 is printed in extenso by the Rev. J. Bliss, A.M., in his edition of 

 Archbishop Laud's works, vol. 6., p. 60.- 



Bishop Davenant's order is as follows : — 



" John by Divine providence Bishop of Sarum. 



To the Curate and Churchwardens with the Parishioners of Awborne in the 

 County of Wilts and our Dioces of Sarum, greeting — 



"Whereas his Mat'', hath beene lately inforrafd that some men factiously 

 disposed have taken upon themselves to place and remoue the Comunion Table 



* The fourth council of Lateran, Can. 21. ordains "That every one of 

 the faithful of both sexes, after they come to the years of discretion, shall in 

 private faithfully confess all their sins, at least once a year, to their own pastor: 

 and take care to fulfil, to the best of their power, the penance enjoined them : 

 receiving reverently, at least at Easter, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, unless 

 perhaps by the counsel of their pastor, for some reasonable cause, they judge it 

 proper to abstain from it for a time : otherwise let them be excluded out of the 

 Church whilst living, and when they die be deprived of Christian burial." This 

 is given as a rubric by Bishop Challoner in his " Garden of the Soul ; a manual 

 of spiritual exercises and instructions. He died in 1781, and was Bishop of 

 Debra, and Vicar Apostolic of the London District. 



b2 



